Category — women’s soccer

It’s been a long summer for Ramona Bachmann, the 19-year-old Swiss prodigy the Atlanta Beat made its top international draft choice.

She’s scored just one goal in six games in Women’s Professional Soccer, and now a sore back is limiting her time with the Swiss team at the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup.

Bachmann was pulled from the first half of Switzerland’s 5-0 loss to the U.S. Saturday. She said the back has been bothering her for the last couple of years and stems from one leg being a bit longer than the other:

“After the World Cup I shall go and see a specialist. If it needs an operation I will have to do it. I am just 19 and my big, big goal is to be the best in the world and for that I need to be fit.”

The Swiss are all but eliminated from the group stage after losing their first two matches. Their group finale is Wednesday against Ghana.

Some very good news for the Beat on the field: They earned their first WPS road victory by downing FC Sky Blue 1-0 on Sunday night. Eniola Aluko got the lone goal of the match in the 7th minute.

Atlanta returns home for a Wednesday match against Chicago at 7:30 p.m. at the KSU Soccer Stadium.

The Women’s Professional Soccer league All-Star Game is Wednesday at the Kennesaw State soccer complex, and some of the country’s top women’s soccer bloggers are in town chronicling all the activities leading up to and including the match.

Jeff Kassouf of the Equalizer blog is doing an All-Star Journal and also wrote about Monday’s pick ’em event that determined the starting lineups. That’s a novel way to do it!

Jenna Pel of the All White Kit blog is trying to make her way from Houston to Atlanta, but summer airline snafus have her delayed.

And the official WPS site has much more on the game, which was almost immediately awarded to the home venue for the Atlanta Beat as a showcase for the first women’s soccer specific stadium in the country.

• The Atlanta Beat scored its first victory in Women’s Professional Soccer Saturday but even more impressively did so without its full contingent of players that has been enhanced since the folding of St. Louis Athletica.

The Beat doesn’t have much time to enjoy its victory, however, as it plays host to Philadelphia Wednesday. Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. at the Kennesaw State soccer complex.

• Atlanta FC got a point in NPSL play Saturday in a 1-1 draw with FC Chattanooga.

• The Atlanta Blackhawks trailed Mississippi 3-0 Saturday in their PDL contest at Alpharetta High School, then staged a late comeback, scoring twice in the last eight minutes for a 3-3 draw.

• The Silverbacks women got back on the winning track in the W-League with a 2-0 clean sheet over Tampa Bay Hellenic.

After a busy week of scooping up players from the defunct St. Louis Athletica, the Atlanta Beat takes to the field Sunday looking for its first win in Women’s Professional Soccer against the Chicago Red Stars.

Kickoff is 6 p.m. Sunday ET at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill., and the game will be shown live on Fox Soccer Channel.

I supposed I was rather modest in my assertion yesterday speculating that the Atlanta Beat would be vastly improved after it signed three former St. Louis Athletica players, including U.S. national team goalkeeper Hope Solo.

Jenna Pel, purveyor of the All White Kit women’s soccer blog, posts today that the demise of Athletica may just have “saved the Beat:”

“Suddenly this is a different team with a different pathos. It’s not everyday you have two of the world’s most skilled athletes at their respective positions suddenly donning your team’s shirt. O’Sullivan has legitimate top-class talent at his disposal now. Fitting for a top-class stadium.”

FanHouse soccer writer Brian Straus, who covered the original Washington Freedom and the Women’s United Soccer Association (as did I with the original Beat) is fairly pessimistic that there’s a viable, long-term market for women’s soccer as a spectator sport in America:

“But it’s hard to take the WPS seriously at this point, and even harder to imagine that anyone else will step forward and view women’s soccer in the U.S. as a good investment.

“Meanwhile, more than 10,000 fans showed up outside Madrid last week to watch teams from Lyon and Potsdam contest the final of the UEFA Women’s Champions League. Go figure.”

In a series of moves that should vastly improve the expansion Atlanta Beat, the Women’s Professional Soccer league announced Tuesday it has it has signed three players from the now-defunct St. Louis Athletica, including U.S. national team goalkeeper Hope Solo.

Solo and other Athletica players were allowed to sign as free agents starting Tuesday after the St. Louis franchise folded for financial reasons last Friday.

Atlanta also has picked up from St. Louis American defender Tina Ellertson and English national team forward Eniola Aluko, who has scored four goals this season to lead WPS. The Beat, which tied Tampa Bay Hellenic of the W-League Saturday in a friendly that replaced a regularly-scheduled game against Athletica, is still looking for its first win in the WPS and plays at Chicago on Sunday.

In another move, Atlanta has placed midfielder Tobin Heath, its top draft pick, on injured reserve for the rest of the season.

Solo, 29, is regarded as one of the top keepers in the world. She was named the WPS keeper of the year in the league’s inaugural season in 2009, and was an Olympic gold medalist in Beijing in 2008.

She’s also been a controversial figure, openly critical of then-U.S. coach Greg Ryan’s removal of her from the semifinals of the 2007 Women’s World Cup, in favor of former Atlanta Beat keeper Briana Scurry.

The move backfired, Germany won the championship and Ryan was eventually replaced by current U.S. coach Pia Sundhage, who has had Solo as her No. 1 keeper most of her tenure.

The game will be played at 7 p.m. at the Kennesaw State soccer complex, the same time and venue as the regularly-scheduled Women’s Professional Soccer League game was to have taken place.

Beat fans who held tickets for the St. Louis game can use them for admission, and they will get a discount on a future home game against a WPS opponent.

In a public statement, Beat general manager Shawn McGee said a revamped league schedule is expected to be announced next Tuesday, June 1. And this:

“Women’s soccer deserves a place within the national pro sports landscape, and you have our word that we are working hard every day to ensure that your Atlanta Beat and Women’s Professional Soccer are a success.”

The ownership of St. Louis Athletica, which was scheduled to play the Atlanta Beat on Saturday, has decided to fold the team in wake of serious financial troubles but will keep alive its men’s team in the North American Soccer League.

The demise of Athletica means that the Women’s Professional Soccer League is back down to seven teams. In March, the Los Angeles Sol abruptly folded, just as the Beat and Philadelphia Independence were preparing their debuts as expansion teams.

WPS commissioner Tonya Antonucci said the league and the U.S. Soccer Federation pursued options to keep Athletica going through the end of the season, “but the operational hurdles and finances just didn’t work out.”

The Beat will be playing on Saturday at home against the W-League’s Tampa Bay Hellenic. Start time is 7 p.m. at the Kennesaw State soccer stadium, just as it had been scheduled for St. Louis. Beat general manager Shawn McGee explains ticket policies and the schedule from here.

The Beat was to have played at St. Louis on June 12. The next WPS home game for Atlanta is June 19 against the Chicago Red Stars.

Richard Farley, a soccer blogger and supporter of the women’s game, is irate that the women’s team in St. Louis was sacrificed so the men could stay in existence:

“Athletica should have been first. They were the first to play. They are performing better, at a higher level, and for less money. Financially, they are easier to save. Athletica players and fans should have been at the top of the pecking order.”

Kenn Tomasch, a blogger with previous involvement in the always-unsteady world of North American minor league soccer, thinks it’s more about economics than sexism, especially given the stormy split between the USL and the NASL that is far from being resolved:

“All you need to do is look at history and see how many people have, over time, invested in men’s pro outdoor soccer versus the number who have, over time, invested in women’s pro outdoor soccer. . . .

“That’s unfortunate for fans of Athletica – and the women’s game – but it’s economic reality.”

I admire Richard’s passion and understand his anger, but I tend to agree with the latter.

The erstwhile American soccer blogger Fake Sigi says Kenn and I are wrong. I’ve never suggested sexism doesn’t exist; I’m a woman in the sports realm after all. There are plenty of occasions I could have griped about sexist treatment, but discerning truly discriminatory action from what is not requires more than employing the white heat of reflexive anger.

Women’s sports will never grow — and grow up — as long as its denizens instantly whip out the red card of sexism when something doesn’t go their way.

The murky machinations of fraudulent investors and overpromising owners angling for something bigger, then throwing teams under the bus when it turns out they didn’t have the money, is not unique to women’s sports, nor to women’s soccer.

We know all about that sort of thing here in the Atlanta soccer community.

This is a “bye” week in Women’s Professional Soccer, but the Atlanta Beat and the rest of the league are anxiously awaiting news out of St. Louis that could have a dramatic effect on everyone concerned in the two-year-old league.

That’s because the St. Louis Athletica, scheduled to play the Beat on May 29 at the KSU Soccer Stadium, is in dire financial straits, along with AC St. Louis, which plays in the newly created North American Soccer League.

Both teams share the same owners, two London-based investors who purchased the clubs last winter. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this morning, Athletica lost an estimated $2 million in 2009, the inaugural season of the WPS, which launched in the heat of the recession.

There’s been no confirmation of a report posted Thursday night on the Major League Soccer Talk blog that the St. Louis teams are on the brink of folding. Nor is there a response to a post at Inside Minnesota Soccer that neither St. Louis team has enough cash to finish the season.

The WPS is operating with eight teams this season, including the expansion Beat and Philadelphia Independence. The Los Angeles Sol, which won the 2009 regular season title and featured Brazil’s Marta, regarded as the best female player in the world, abruptly folded before the season.

Athletica features four prominent U.S. national team members in goalkeeper Hope Solo, midfielders Shannon Boxx and Lori Chalupny and forward Lindsay Tarpley. Solo and Boxx are on the American roster for Saturday’s friendly in Cleveland against Germany (6 p.m. ET, ESPN2).

Update: Things are looking a little better for AC St. Louis, but no word yet on the fate of Athletica.

The first national television audience to view the Atlanta Beat at its new home at Kennesaw State University witnessed the same old result for the expansion club.

The Washington Freedom downed the still-winless Beat 2-0 before a crowd of 3,112, less than half for last weekend’s home opener.

Women’s Professional Soccer does have a better television presence than the Women’s United Soccer Association. But the weekly WPS game on Fox Soccer Channel on Sunday evenings isn’t conducive to a good home draw, especially with school still in session.

The Beat is off this week and will entertain St. Louis Athletica on May 29 in the first Saturday night home game of the season.

On Saturday night, the Atlanta Silverbacks women opened their 2010 season with a 1-0 win over Hampton Roads as Kay Harbrueger got the game’s only goal in the first half.

The Silverbacks remain at home this week and will play host to the Tampa Bay Hellenic on Saturday.